Sorry this is short, I am in the midst of moving and haven't had a ton of time to write. I think many of you will be pleased with this chapter though, and I feel like it's still paced well. Maybe I have too much faith in myself.

I want to say I appreciate everyone who reads these installments upon release. I know a lot of fanfic readers prefer to wait until a story has been finished to start it, but unfortunately that's not how my personal process works at all, so thank you for being along for the piecemeal ride.

Soundtrack:
Pavement – "Here" from Slanted and Enchanted
Efterklang - "Dreams Today" from Piramida

April 17, 2013

"Yvette? Is that really you?"

"You can hear me?"

"Yes, I can… how is this possible?"

"Oh thank God, I've been trying to get you to hear me for so long."

"How are you still alive? Virginia sealed you in there months ago... how do I know this isn't some awful trick?"

"Would a trickster know enough about this place to get you this message? Would they know about Lorenzo? Would they know about Mr. Piggles?"

"Yvette…"

"Something down here is keeping me breathing, Alex. Something amazing. I'm too weak to move and it's so dark, but I can feel it helping me, nurturing me. This could be the legendary "heart" of the Armory that our great-grandfather Roman wrote of, why it was built here in the first place. It's magic, Alex, amazing, beautiful magic. You must let me out so I can share it with you."

"Of course I will. But we can't get the door open. It's blocked with some sort of spell."

"Yes, but I know how to remove it. You must acquire a witch that belongs to the Bennett bloodline. Only their unique ancestral link can break the seal."

"I'm so sorry. Virginia killed Lucy as soon as she finished whatever she did to entomb you. There aren't any other Bennetts left."

"Oh, but there are, sister. Or, rather, there is."

January 14, 2014

As Bonnie walks up to the door of her dorm she immediately hears a familiar raised voice coming from inside the room.

"Am I supposed to believe that? You let her escape once, didn't you? How the fuck do we know she won't do it again?"

She waves her hand to unlock the already-unlocked door out of habit and steps in, her gloom and despair jolted with the smallest hint of mirth at the familiar sight of angry Damon on the phone.

"Yeah, Enzo, I'm happy you got this great new job that, if you haven't noticed, is basically a bunch of manipulative fucks stringing you along with some false promise of family secrets while you do free vamp labor for them. But seems like you can't even get that right. What, a top-secret supernatural curation agency can't even keep one measly vampire hunter in a cage?"

He nods to Bonnie in greeting as she throws her bag, box of candles, and other supplies onto her bed and plops herself down too. There's soft concern in his icy blue eyes, even as his eyebrows furrow in frustration at whatever Enzo is saying on the other end of the line.

"I'll take you up on that offer. Because there is no way in HELL I am going back into that Stone. And this Rayna bitch seems quite handy with her sword, so I'd prefer her safely locked behind multiple feet of concrete. Think you can manage that?"

Damon hangs up without waiting for an answer, and again Bonnie barely suppresses a chuckle despite her malaise. "Enzo being difficult?"

"You have no idea," he replies, accentuating the words with his signature eye-roll. "Apparently he's been 'working' for this museum-type place called the Armory, which I guess is where he's been since he showed up in the hospital where you and Nora found Rayna. And she escaped right under their noses. Literally. Their excuse is that someone with high security clearance just straight up 'let her out.' And 'they're being dealt with.' Whatever the hell that means."

"How is she even still alive? I watched her die, Damon. And who the hell is Cade?"

"According to Enzo, she resurrects anew each time she dies. So she's unkillable, apparently. As for your last question, I don't have a single fucking clue."

"What the fuck." Bonnie stretches her arms high above her head and then behind her back. The incantations to retrieve Nora's soul took nowhere near as long as the ones for Damon's, yet she's still completely worn out—most likely due to the fact that any feeling of success dissipated immediately when Nora fled. "And here I was thinking we'd seen everything."

"Yeah, no shit. To think that at one point I didn't even know about werewolves." Damon looks amused, but his expression hardens into something more serious as he watches Bonnie's shoulders sag in exhaustion. "How are you holding up?"

"How do you think?" She lets her body go limp and falls onto her back on top of her sheets. Damon doesn't respond, but she hears him get up from the corner of Caroline's bed, move her stuff to the floor, and lie down beside her. He doesn't say anything for a moment, but then: "We'll find her. You know that right?"

Bonnie's mouth contorts into some hybrid of a grimace and a smile, which is unfortunately also indicative of her emotional state. "How do you know that?"

They're both staring at the ceiling—well, Bonnie is, and thus can't see whether Damon is or not—and yet the conversation doesn't feel at all detached. "I'm here, aren't I?" he replies.

"If you recall, we didn't exactly find you. You found us. Or found Stefan, rather."

"Yeah, but I still turned up eventually. Even with how fucked up I was. And kind of still am. But the fear and the hallucinations don't make the deep stuff go away. You don't always know it, but you're still the same person underneath. All you can hope is that whatever kind of person you are is strong enough to break through."

Bonnie finally shifts onto her side, propping her head up with a crooked elbow. "And the obvious point of this being…"

"...that if I could do it, Nora definitely can," Damon finishes with a chuckle. He doesn't shift from his prostrate position but tilts his head a bit to look at Bonnie. "I mean, I don't know much about her. Just that I never would have expected... you know. But God damn it, you're happy with her, right?"

This time it's no grimace, all smile. "Yeah. I am."

"Right. Definitely enough evidence to conclude she's a better person than me. And I say that without an ounce of self-pity," he adds pointedly, shushing Bonnie's incoming protest with a wave of his hand. "I could be your bitch for five eternities and still not make up for all the bullshit I've done to you. And yet here you are, letting me be your friend. The least I can do is give you a pep talk and help you get your girl back, right?"

"Five? I would think at least eight would be a good start," Bonnie jokes as she wraps Damon in a horizontal bear hug, during which she probably more closely resembles a latched-on facehugger from Alien. "Elena would be proud of you, you know," she says more quietly, the words muffled by their tight embrace.

"Really?" he asks in response when they pull apart, sounding much younger and more innocent than usual.

"Really."

He smiles, a big, genuine smile—like the one he gave her after she finally escaped the prison world and met him in the Salvatore kitchen. Then it gets more mischievous. "You know I'm gonna talk mad shit about you when she wakes up?"

"If you didn't, she wouldn't believe you," Bonnie says with a grin, whose radiance dims a bit when the reality of the current situation once again breaks through the temporary respite. "I'm worried about Nora, Damon. The look on her face when we woke her up... I don't know what she went through in there, but it fucked her up. All she said was 'I can't do it again.'"

"Well, in my tragic hellscape, the people kept dying over and over again. In Stefan's, it was me. In Julian's, Lily. What if her looping event was killing you?"

Bonnie's blood runs cold. "Shit."

"And if it's anything like my experience, she thinks she's still in the Stone. So we should find her, fast." He nods his head toward her candles. "Any luck with locator spells?"

Bonnie shakes her head. "Must be the same interference that kept us from finding you."

Damon furrows his eyebrows. "Maybe try again. But just you this time. Who knows, maybe the buried piece of her that's still intact wants to be found, and it only has enough strength to reach out to you."

"That's a stretch," she replies with raised eyebrows.

"We just found out about the existence of a ruthless vampire huntress with an entirely new breed of immortality at her disposal, and you're a skeptic? What else do you propose we do—canvas the town? knock on doors?" He gasps in mock surprise. "...rent a helicopter?"

"Okay, okay, sure. I'm just tired of shit not working, you know?" Taking her candles out of the box feels robotic, simply a process to be mindlessly repeated. To think magic used to be fun.

"I get it. But as Stefan often says, she wouldn't give up on you, or even me for that matter—God knows why—so we can't give up on her."

"You're right." Bonnie sighs, hesitant to allow herself the tinge of optimism that Damon's proactive attitude is slowly cultivating. "I don't even know how big of a map to use. What if she fucked off to Europe or something?"

Damon rolls his eyes. "Keep it to the state, I'd say. One, she can't have gone that far by now, and two, when you're in the grips of the hell stone you tend to stick to places you know. Or people you know, in my case."

"When I get my hopes up and then they get dashed against the rocks again, I hope you'll feel bad."

He smiles mischievously. "Oh, come on, Bon... when have I ever felt bad about anything?"

"Touché, Manson." Bonnie spreads out the Virginia road map on the floor between the two beds and sets a candle in each corner, holding a fifth in both of her hands before she closes her eyes and all of the wicks ignite simultaneously. She sets down the candle and grabs the wrinkled top they'd been using for the spell at the heretics' house in one hand and the jar of black sand in the other, pours a pile in the general vicinity of Whitmore, shuts her eyes once more and begins the incantation she's uttered too many times to count.

"Phesmatos trœbum, nas ex vœras, sequitas sanguinem. Phesmatos trœbum, nas ex vœras, sequitas sanguinem. Phesmatos trœbum…"

To her surprise, she hears the sand start to move across the creased paper of the map. She can sense Damon's smug look, even though he doesn't say anything. The edges of Bonnie's lips curl upward as she continues to repeat the words, stopping only when she hears, "Wait! It stopped."

She opens her eyes. That was fast. Where—

"She's in Mystic Falls." Damon looks confused. "Why would she go there?"

A horrible realization washes over Bonnie like a bucket of ice water. "Oh shit."

"What?"

"She's going back to where she tried the first time."

Damon looks even more lost. "Bon, you're not making any sense."

"We need to go. NOW."

It's completely dark when they finally arrive at the ruins of the old Salvatore house, but as if drawn by some unseen force Bonnie's eyes immediately adjust and focus on a trembling silhouette at the edge of the treeline. "I see her," she says flatly, reaching to open the door until Damon stops her.

"Are you sure this is the way you want to do this?" he asks, with more concern in his eyes than she could have ever thought possible just a few years ago.

Bonnie looks at both Valerie and Beau, who are sitting in the backseat. Their faces are both grim, but they nod. She turns back to Damon. "This isn't the only way. But it's the best way to make sure we don't lose her again."

He sighs. "Fine. Just remember I'm gonna be the one who has to explain to Elena why her lifelong slumber ended up being an afternoon nap."

"Boo hoo, baby boy," Bonnie shoots back, riding the wave of nervous adrenaline that has started to surge in her body at the thought of what lies ahead. "You'll have my back, right?"

"Always, girl."

They exchange one last it's gonna be okay look before Bonnie finally gets out of the car for real and starts to walk toward the shadowy form that she's now completely sure is her girlfriend, but even if she weren't it would be confirmed by Nora's barely audible mutter: "You shouldn't be here."

She doesn't turn around, but Bonnie stares straight at the back of her head as if it were possible to make eye contact through the layers of her skull. "Where else should I be?"

"Home. School. Living the beautifully human, vampire-free, perfectly imperfect life you were always meant to live." It's clear from the hollowness of the words that she was crying, but isn't anymore. Not a good sign.

"I hate to break it to you, but my life wasn't any of those things long before I met you, and even if you never came into my life it would have stayed that way. I've done the moral crisis thing already. Several times, actually. And this version of me, the one that stands here right now, is the most me I've felt since I can remember. So the words that come out of my mouth are truer than they ever have been."

"I killed you."

Bonnie's heart breaks a bit. She gulps, resisting the urge to break down and cry, knowing she has to stay strong. "That was in the Stone, Nora. You're out now."

"How do I know? How will I ever know?"

"I know it seems impossible to ever know for sure. But I can prove it to you. I can show you that you are no longer locked in your own mind, assaulted by every ounce of hatred for vampires the world has ever felt, inside that thing that's only goal is to break you; that you're in the real world, where you can be happy, where you deserve to be happy."

Nora still hasn't turned around, and Bonnie swallows anxiously. She thought she was prepared to say what she needs to say, but now, in the moment, she's terrified. And yet, somewhere below it all, hiding beneath the layers of fear and uncertainty and insecurity, is the knowledge that this is right. And that glowing fact only gets brighter by the second, until it spreads through her whole body like an overflowing conduit, and the truth forces itself out into the world, where it belongs, where it always belonged.

"I mean it when I say this is me. This, right here. These words are coming out of my mouth. So Nora, you can believe when I say that... that I love you."

When she finally rotates her body to face Bonnie, what little light there is in the almost pitch-black clearing twinkles in the wetness of her wide green eyes. "What did you say?" she asks shakily, letting the hand that still clutches a roughly whittled stake drop to her side. The sight breaks Bonnie's heart a bit, but the small fissure is immediately salved and healed by the electric warmth that only seems to be getting more powerful.

"I said I love you, Nora. I'm in love with you. I know we haven't known each other for very long, and I know both of our emotional baggage loads would break anyone else's backs, and I know that things will never be perfect and we'll always have things to work on, but I don't care because I—"

Bonnie is cut off by Nora suddenly zipping to stand right in front of her, looking at her in a way she never has, each of the two pools of green its own hurricane of fear and doubt and joy and love and above all hope, and as the webs of dark, swollen veins start to writhe around them Bonnie closes her eyes, waiting for Nora to dry to drain her and instantly be knocked out with the vervain concentrate that courses through her bloodstream, but the sharp puncturing pain followed by a dull, growing ache that no survivor ever forgets the feeling of never comes, and when she opens her eyes again Nora is still before her, still beholding her, but gone are the fangs and redness, it's just her, and she's beautiful, maybe more than she ever has been, no definitely more than she ever has been, and their gazes are locked as the taller girl finally moves her perfect lips to speak: "Bonnie?"

"It's me."

"I know this— I know it's real, because I can resist it." Nora takes another step forward, and now their boot-clad toes are practically touching, and she says, "I'm really here? You're really here? You promise?"

"Pinky swear." Bonnie takes one of hers and brings it up to Nora's cheek and gently wipes a crystalline tear away, and when she hears it the first time she almost doesn't realize, it's like a muffled cry from somewhere too far off, and so with her racing heart pounding in her throat she says, "Say it again," and Nora complies.

"I love you too, Bonnie."

The first snowflakes from a previously flurry-free sky silently dust both of their heads as their lips meet and their hands find each other's hair and they feel the earth's axis shift back into place.

date unknown, closest approximation January 14, 2014

"What the hell was the point of that? She wasn't even in the hell-stone for a day. I thought your big plan was to break Bonnie Bennett. Kind of hard to do that when you don't follow through with killing her girlfriend, not to mention the fact that they seem able to work through pretty much everything."

"Didn't I once tell you not to question my methods, Ms. Petrova?"

"Your methods are questioning themselves."

"Perhaps I need to put things more simply. In a way you would actually understand. How about a cute little metaphor? You were once a farmer's daughter, were you not?"

"Don't talk to me about my father."

"Well, that's not the point. My understanding of familial emotional dynamics is… lacking, to say the least, but I believe it may bring you some sort of comfort to know that I claimed his soul for taking your child from you, among other things."

"Good riddance."

"He didn't last long in here. Pathetic, snivelling little man. I consumed him quickly."

"You are a terrifying fucker, you know that, right? All this time spent ruling hell mushed your brain a bit?"

"Funny. But back to the metaphor: the seeds, how do you say, have been planted where Bonnie and Nora are concerned."

"Oh, great, that's much less cryptic."

"Trust me, Ms. Petrova. It's only a matter of time now. Everything has begun to converge."